North Koreans Say They Hold Nuclear Arms

By JAMES BROOKE and DAVID E. SANGER; James Brooke reported from Tokyo for this article, and David E. Sanger from Washington. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Steven R. Weisman from Luxembourg.

Published: February 11, 2005

North Korea declared publicly on Thursday for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons and would refuse to return to disarmament talks. That left China, the United States and its allies to debate whether diplomacy could still persuade the North Koreans to give up the nuclear option.

American officials played down the importance of the declaration, while acknowledging that they were surprised by the announcement; they and Asian officials had believed North Korea was about to return to the negotiating table after a hiatus of eight months.

The officials said American intelligence agencies had for years worked on the assumption that the North probably possessed nuclear weapons. Just last week, two White House officials traveled to Asia with assessments that North Korea's arsenal had probably enlarged and with evidence that the country had probably sold partly processed nuclear fuel on the black market.

In Washington, intelligence officials were scanning satellite imagery for any evidence that North Korea might be preparing a nuclear test, but so far have seen none, officials said.

Five months ago, senior Bush administration officials warned that they suspected that North Korea might be preparing a test ahead of the American presidential election; the activity they had detected slowed soon after Washington's disclosure, and China, Russia, Britain and the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, all called on North Korea to re-engage with the negotiations.

In Luxembourg on Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, winding up a tour of Europe and the Middle East, called the North Korean announcement ''an unfortunate move, most especially probably for the people of North Korea, because it only deepens the North Korean isolation from the rest of the international community.''

But the administration's message seemed mixed. While Ms. Rice and the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the United States would simply follow the same course of trying to lure the North back into talks, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld gave public voice to the administration's growing concern.

''One has to worry about weapons of that power in the hands of leadership of that nature,'' he said in Nice, France. ''I don't think that anyone would characterize the leadership in that country as being restrained.''

Several current and former administration officials, declining to speak for attribution, said the announcement would be very likely to bolster some arguments in the administration that Washington should press to cut off North Korea's remaining trade and financial flows, in hopes of squeezing the country and perhaps destabilizing the government of President Kim Jong Il.

Vice President Dick Cheney ''has always argued that 'time is not on our side,''' said one former senior official who argued for deepened engagement with North Korea. ''Kim's just made life easier for the hard-liners.''

In Beijing -- where the negotiations have taken place and the Chinese leadership has used the talks to enter a new diplomatic role in the world -- the government gently urged North Korea late Thursday night to come back to the table. But the Chinese said nothing, at least in public, about the North's claim to have nuclear weapons, a stance that underlined China's diplomatic predicament.

Chinese leaders have tried for years to find middle ground between the United States and North Korea, not wanting a nuclear neighbor, but also not wanting the North Korean government to collapse, sending out a flood of refugees. They have consistently urged the rest of the world, especially the United States, to show more patience with North Korea.

They had also contended that it was unclear that North Korea had developed nuclear weapons, despite American intelligence that it had.

The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, told reporters in Tokyo, ''We will have to continue to persuade North Korea that it is to their benefit to scrap nuclear weapons.''

In its statement, North Korea specifically attacked Japan for ''toeing the U.S. line.''

Tokyo has been struggling with mounting popular pressure for economic sanctions against the North. On Tuesday, Mr. Koizumi personally received a petition calling for sanctions, signed by five million people.

In the past, North Korea has publicly boasted that it possesses an unspecified ''deterrent force'' and, on the sidelines of six-nation negotiations, warned American officials that it had nuclear capability.

But it had stopped short of a formal announcement that its nuclear fuel had been placed into weapons, perhaps because retaining ambiguity on the point helped China. The announcement from North Korea was clear, however. It said it had ''manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's undisguised policy to isolate and stifle'' it, and that it would ''bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal.''

The statement said North Korea had decided to suspend participation in disarmament talks because it had concluded that the Bush administration would pursue the ''brazen-faced, double-dealing tactics'' of both dialogue and ''regime change.''

It was unclear, Asian and American officials said, whether North Korea was definitively slamming the door to talks or merely trying to raise its price for returning to them.